27 Mart 2014 Perşembe

Henry Miller - (The Rosy Crucifixion: Sexus)

CLEO

Anyway, Cleo! By the time Cleo appears everybody is ready to jerk off. (Not like in India where a rich nabob buys up a half dozen rows of seats in order to masturbate in peace.) Here everybody gets to work under his hat. A condensed milk orgy. Semen flows as freely as gasoline. Even a blind man would know that there's nothing but cunt in sight. The amazing thing it that there is never a stampede. Now and then some one goes home and cuts his balls off with a rusty razor, but these little exploits you never read about in the newspapers.

One of the things that made Cleo's dance fascinating was the little pom−pom she wore in the center of her girdle—planted right over her rose−bush. It served to keep your eyes riveted to the spot. She could rotate it like a pin−wheel or make it jump and quiver with little electric spasms. Sometimes it would subside with little gasps, like a swan coming to rest after a deep orgasm. Sometimes it acted saucy and impudent, sometimes it was sullen and morose. It seemed to be part of her, a little ball of fluff that had grown out of her Mons Venus. Possibly she had acquired it in an Algerian whore−house, from a French sailor. It was tantalizing, especially to the sixteen−years olds who had still to know what it feels like to make a grab for a woman's bush.

What her face was like I hardly remember any more. I have a faint recollection that her nose was retrousse. One would never recognize her with her clothes on, that's a cinch. You concentrated on the torso, in the center of which was a huge painted navel the color of carmine. It was like a hungry mouth, this navel. Like the What her face was like I hardly remember any more. I have a faint recollection that her nose was retrousse. One would never recognize her with her clothes on, that's a cinch. You concentrated on the torso, in the center of which was a huge painted navel the color of carmine. It was like a hungry mouth, this navel. Like the mouth of a fish suddenly stricken with paralysis. I'm sure her cunt wasn't half as exciting to look at. It was probably a pale bluish sliver of meat that a dog wouldn't even bother to sniff. She was alive in her mid−riff, in that sinuous fleshy pear which domed out from under the chest bones. The torso reminded me always of those dressmaker's model whose thighs end in a framework of umbrella ribs. As a child I used to love to run my hand over the umbilical swell. It was heavenly to the touch. And the fact that there were no arms or legs to the model enhanced the bulging beauty of the torso. Sometimes there was no wickerwork below—just a truncated figure with a little collar of a neck which was always painted a shiny black. They were the intriguing ones, the lovable ones. One night in a side show I came upon a live one, just like the sewing machine models at home. She moved about on the platform with her hands, as if she were treading water. I got real close to her and engaged her in conversation. She had a head, of course, and it was rather a pretty one, something like the wax images you see in hairdressing establishments in the chic quarters of a big city. I learned that she was from Vienna; she had been born without legs. But I'm getting off the track.... The thing that fascinated me about her was that she had that same voluptuous swell, that pear−like ripple and bulge. I sCLEO

tood by her platform a long time just to survey her from all angles. It was amazing how close her legs had been pared off. Just another slice off her and she would have been minus a twat. The more I studied her the more tempted I was to push her over. I could imagine my arms around her cute little waist, imagine myself picking her up, slinging her under my arm and making off with her to ravish her in a vacant lot.

Everything is calculated to the minute. By the time 10:23 strikes Cleo is ready to do her second and final number. She will have just about eight and a half minutes to spare, according to the terms of the contract. Then she will have to stand in the wings for another twelve minutes and take her place with the rest of the cast for the finale. Those twelve minutes burn her up. They are precious minutes which are completely wasted. She can't even get into her street clothes; she must show herself in all her glory and give just one little squirm or two as the curtain falls. It burns her up.

Before the great spastic movements begin with a drum−like roll of the torso, Cleo circles about the stage with the hypnotic ease and lassitude of a cobra. The supple, milk−white legs are screened behind a veil of beads girdled at the waist; the pink nipples are draped with transparent gauze. She is boneless, milky, drugged: a medusa with a straw wig undulating in a lake of glass beads.

As she discards the tinkling robe the pom−pom becomes the tom−tom and the tom−tom the pom−pom.

Observing Cleo, the image of that Viennese torso in the side−show reverts to mind. Was Cleo not as thoroughly excommunicated from human society as that seductive freak who was born without legs? No one dares to pounce upon Cleo, any more than one would dare to paw the legless beauty at Coney Island. Though every movement of her body is based on the manual of earthly intercourse no one even thinks of responding to the invitation. To approach Cleo in the midst of her dance would be considered as heinous a crime as to rape the helpless freak of the sideshow.

Cleo is becoming positively luminous in the cold radiance of the spotlight. Her belly has become a swollen, sullen sea in which the brilliant carmine navel tosses about like the gasping mouth of a naufrage. With the tip of her cunt she tosses floral pieces into the orchestra. The pom−pom becomes the tom−tom and the tom−tom the pom−pom. The blood of the masturbator is in her veins. Her teats are concentric veins of stewed purple. Her mouth flashes like the red sear of a tusk ripping a warm limb. The arms are cobras, the legs are made of patent leather. Her face is paler than ivory, the expressions fixed, as in the terra cotta demons of Yucatan. The concentrated lust of the mob invades her with the nebulous rhythm of a solar body taking substance. Like a moon wrenched from the fiery surface of the earth, she disgorges pieces of blood−soaked meat. She moves without feet, as do the freshly amputated victims of the battle−field in their dreams. She writhes on her imaginary soft stumps, emitting noiseless groan of lacerating ecstasy.

Cleo was terminating her dance. The last convulsive movements had coincided with the fantastic retrospection on Osmanli's death....